14

MACHU AND PICCHU

As soon as the llamas were delivered, Wendy called Danny, who said he’d come out right away. While waiting for him to arrive, Wendy said to Kyle, “You know, it takes him two hours to walk from his house to here. Yet he comes out every Friday to do the afternoon feeding, and usually helps around on weekends, too.”

“Aren’t you paying him?” Kyle asked.

“I tried,” Wendy said. “He wouldn’t take any money because he said being around animals is fun, not work. But I was wondering, could we buy him a bike? That way it wouldn’t take him so long to get here. He could even come after school if he felt like it.”

“Sure,” Kyle said. “No twelve-and-a-half-year-old should be without wheels.” He paused, then backtracked. “Actually, maybe it’s not such a good idea. Given how mean his old man is, if he thought Danny had got a bicycle from a cop, he’d probably give him some grief about it.”

Reluctantly, Wendy agreed. But a little later, as she, Kyle, and Danny stood by the fence watching the llamas sprong across the field, she had a better idea.

“It’s like they’re on pogo sticks!” Danny exclaimed, and laughed out loud as the two llamas bounced from one side of the pasture to the other, landing on all four legs at once in a way that sent them “spronging” into the air.

“You were so much help with us this summer when we were building fence and planting trees,” Wendy said. “We decided that one of the llamas should be yours.”

As Danny turned wide, disbelieving eyes on her, Wendy quickly added, “Your llama would have to live here, of course. And I wouldn’t want you to sell him. If you ever decided you didn’t want him, you’d have to give him back to me so he can stay here with his brother.”

“But he would really be mine?” Danny asked. “My very own?”

“Sure,” Wendy said. “That way, you could use some of the money you’ve saved to buy yourself a bike.”

“Oh, yeah!” Danny agreed enthusiastically. “That’d be great!”

“That one,” she pointed, “is Machu. The one over there is Picchu.” She turned to smile and Danny and noticed for the first time how much he had grown. He was now almost as tall as she was. “Which one do you want?”

Danny was silent, watching the llamas. “They’re pretty wild,” he said at last. “I’d like to get to know them before I choose. I wouldn’t want one that didn’t like me.”

“Of course not,” Wendy agreed. “They weren’t hand-raised and aren’t going to come to us right off. But I bet in a week we can have them coming to the fence to take treats from us. Just don’t ever go in that pasture with them by yourself, okay?”

“Oh, I won’t,” Danny assured her. “They might have Male Berserk Syndrome.”

“How did you know about Male Berserk Syndrome?” Wendy asked, surprised.

“Read about it on the Internet,” Danny told her. “Male llamas don’t tolerate intruders in their space, especially other males. If a llama gets mad at a man, he might stomp him to death.”

“That’s right,” Wendy said, wondering if the aggressiveness of some male llamas toward some men was one of the things Danny liked about them. Just as he had fantasies of training a pet llama to spit on kids who teased him, maybe he had fantasies of training one to attack the boys who bullied him.

If so, Wendy could hardly criticize him, since it was partly for that aggressive instinct that she wanted llamas. She had never mentioned this to Kyle, just as she had not told him that the reason she wanted peacocks was because they set up a terrible racket if anybody approached the house. Llamas would provide similar protection from anyone attempting to cross the pasture. They were not noisy like the peacocks, but any strange man who tried to cross the pasture, day or night, was going to find himself face to face with two aggressive male llamas.

• • •

Kyle was not as fond of the llamas as Danny and Wendy were. They didn’t go berserk when he went into the field, but they weren’t friendly, and they had habits that he found annoying. “I don’t see the point in having hoofstock that doesn’t graze close enough keep the weeds down,” he grumbled, as he took the Weed Eater out of the garage. “I thought the main reason for getting the llamas was so I didn’t have this chore.”

When he came in from the running the Weed Eater over the field, he was really mad. “Those darned llamas!” he complained to Wendy. “Instead of eating the weeds, they’re destroying the fruit trees we planted!”

“Oh dear!” Wendy said. “I’ll get Danny to help me build them a pen this weekend.”

“Well, make it one they can’t get out of,” Kyle muttered. “For all the good the pasture does, they might as well be running lose.”

It was true that the llamas managed to escape from the pasture at least once a week. A neighbour would phone to say they were at his place and somebody better come get them. Kyle thought they kept escaping because Wendy forgot to close the gate. She thought he was the one who hadn’t checked to make sure the latch was down. It wasn’t until they’d had the llamas a month that they discovered that it wasn’t his fault or hers.

Wendy had fed the llamas herself that morning, and double-checked to make sure the gate was fastened. She was indoors at the computer when the phone rang.

“Wendy,” Kyle barked, “go get your stupid llamas!”

“Where are they?” Wendy asked, and wondered, if they were out, how Kyle would know, since he was at work.

“In the front yard!” Kyle yelled. “Can’t you hear the peacocks?”

“Yes, but it’s only the postman they’re fussing at. I heard his car turn in.”

“The llamas are out there, too. The postmaster just phoned. He said the llamas are holding the letter-carrier hostage! Go get them back in the corral!”

“On my way!” Wendy quickly hung up and ran downstairs.

Sure enough, there was the poor postman sitting in his car, surrounded by Wendy’s “guard animals.” Machu, lips puckered, stood at the driver-side window — a window which, Wendy noticed, was already slimed with green llama spit. Picchu was behind the car, blocking it so the postman couldn’t back out. The peahens ran around the lawn honking and screeching, while the peacock, his tail feathers spread in a royal fan, strutted back and forth in front of the car as if admiring his reflection in the chrome bumper.

Wendy grabbed each of the llamas by the halter and pulled them away from the car. The postman quickly backed out. When he reached the highway, he rolled down his spit-slimed window and yelled, “You keep them vicious animals locked up, you hear? Or you’re going to have to go to town to get your mail!”

“Yes sir!” Wendy called back. To Machu and Picchu, she said, “Bad boys!”

But she wasn’t really angry. In fact, as soon as they were back in the pasture, she went into the house and got a carrot for each of them. Then she got some wire from the garage to double-fasten the gate latch which, she now understood, they had known how to open all along.

“Now stay put,” she told the llama brothers. “Hoofstock is supposed to guard the pasture. You leave it to the peacocks to provide security in the front yard, okay?”

She went back inside and phoned Kyle to let him know that she had rescued the postman, and the llamas were back where they belonged. “The rascals have figured out how to open the gate,” she explained. “I’ll try to get that new pen built this week.” She added, “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t realize when I got them that they’d be so much trouble. With such a big pasture to run in, I don’t know why they keep trying to get out.”

“Ah, they’re not that much trouble,” Kyle said, in a tone that told Wendy he felt bad about having yelled at her. “If you shut me up someplace where I didn’t have a female companion, I reckon I’d want to break out, too.”

• • •

When Danny arrived after school, Wendy told him they would have to build a pen with a gate that had some special kind of lock the llamas couldn’t open.

As Danny helped Wendy measure and mark the fence line for the new corral, he noted, “This pen will be smaller than the pasture. Do you think they’ll like it?”

Wendy let the tape retract so they could move to the next section. “They’re going to like what I plan to put in it,” she told Danny, with a twinkle in her eye.

“What?”

“A girl llama.”

“Really?”

“I called Mr. McDermont to find out if he knew anybody who had one they wanted to get rid of cheap. He did, and I’ve already talked to the owner. As soon as we get this pen built, Dolly Llama is coming to keep our boys company.”

“Dolly Llama?” Danny gave Wendy a quizzical look. “Isn’t that the name of a Buddhist preacher?”

“Sort of. The head of the Tibetan Buddhist religion is called the Dalai Lama. He preaches peace and tranquility. Maybe having one of our llamas called by a name that sounds like his will help them stay calm, and not go around spitting at postmen.”

Wendy turned to look at Machu and Picchu, grazing peacefully on the other side of the pasture. Half-joking, but half-serious, too, she said, “Our llamas ought to save their spit for people who want to hurt us.”